how do you script

Joel Fagin · Post by **Joel Fagin** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 3:05 pm

Nanda wrote:
anywherebuthere wrote:think...about...your...characters...and...story...continiously.
Where have YOU been?!

Anywhere but... Oh, never mind.

- Joel Fagin

Jim North · Post by **Jim North** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 4:04 pm

You were right on the brink of sinking into the void there, Sir Fagin.

Anywherebuthere · Post by **Anywherebuthere** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 4:09 pm

Nanda wrote:
anywherebuthere wrote:think...about...your...characters...and...story...continiously.

Where have YOU been?!

In a mostly post-coital haze.

Hilarioushenry · Post by **Hilarioushenry** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 5:05 pm

I guess I just sit in a daze for awhile with a blank page before me until something comes to mind. If I try to write an outline or do anything too "official", I lose interest and go on to other things.

Glambourine · Post by **Glambourine** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 7:10 pm

Pimpette wrote:... all my storyboards look like this:

(image)

Some days I feel they are more expressive than the actual finished comic. =/

Hey, my storyboards look almost exactly like that (down to the hastily-written text below the layouts), and I usually think they're more expressive than the actual finished comic as well!

Actually, it goes two ways: either I hate the layouts and I end up liking the finished panel, or I love the layouts and I hate the finished panel. I have no idea why this is, unless it has to do with the fact that in the first case I feel like I'm making something better, and in the second case I feel like I'm making it worse.

The sketchy layouts have to come before any dialogue, though (with very, very few exceptions.) If the story works visually and if the art's funny, then the dialogue has to do less work, and I can see where a panel needs better writing to compensate for worse art (or if a panel with "good" art needs to be just left the hell alone.) I figure out where the story's going months in advance and I break it down week-by-week, but the dialogue is mostly variable until I'm actually lettering it.

McDuffies · Post by **McDuffies** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 8:51 pm

anywherebuthere wrote:
Nanda wrote:
anywherebuthere wrote:think...about...your...characters...and...story...continiously.

Where have YOU been?!
In a mostly post-coital haze.

We thought you got popular and forgot about us.

Anywherebuthere · Post by **Anywherebuthere** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 9:06 pm

mcDuffies wrote:
anywherebuthere wrote:
Nanda wrote:
Where have YOU been?!
In a mostly post-coital haze.
We thought you got popular and forgot about us.

Not so much popular, as "adjusting to the engagement/married life".

Heck, I took close to a month and a half off the strip for honeymoon/needing to figure out how to schedule my time better.

CaptainClaude · Post by **CaptainClaude** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:21 am

nice to see you again anyway, man.

as for scripting. I have a beginning and a sortof end for each chapter. then everything inbetween is mostly improvised. I also have a "big" ending that i'm building towards which kinda closes out the first big volume of ry.

BHSC is almost entirely improvised

Hellroy I'm aiming to do much shorter chapters than RY because it means I can get a sotry down faster with a much lower update schedule.

and Keith is my "Write first ask questions later" comic

Eve Z. · Post by **Eve Z.** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 2:45 am

I do my script as it comes. and usually it comes at the moment. :)First when I draw my pages, I also draw the world bubbles and I write in my own language. then, I translate it in English.

Hard time for my skills.

uh well, of course I have a main plan already for what will happen next.

McDuffies · Post by **McDuffies** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 4:57 am

HAWT!

Fortunesfools · Post by **Fortunesfools** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 5:47 pm

I tend use a more fractal scripting method (of course, this being our first go around, it has been more successful in some instances than others). So I'll outline how I went through the first stages.

First there is the attempt to establish what the overall plot of the arc is going to be (and then an associated B-plot).

This is then divided into three parts: lead-up/rising action/climax and conclusion.

Our first story arc has ended up being quite long (and now filed under lessons learned), so each one of these parts represented a script unto itself. This script is then divided into three parts as above. Scripting is done for 21 pages (+/- 7 for each section). Each part represent one or two separate scenes.

At this stage, I outline what each page's general purpose/action will be. Then each page gets written up into panels with dialogue and suggested actions.

Then it goes to production and everything changes.

There is the give and take of the writer/artist dynamic, negotiation, and compromises. When we get to the page's actual turn in the rotation it undergoes more dramatic surgery. Actions are slightly altered, layouts are done, dialogue updated/improved and scenes stretched over more pages than originally intended.

"And that's how it gets to your local supermarket, Timmy. All ready to be purchased and roasted in your mother's oven for the next four hours so that you and your dad can enjoy a delicious meal."

"Gee whiz. And does it ever fall prey to mad cow disease?"

END

- ff

Mvmarcz · Post by **Mvmarcz** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 6:27 pm

omigawdiloveyourcomic :cling:

Fortunesfools · Post by **Fortunesfools** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 7:59 pm

mvmarcz wrote:omigawdiloveyourcomic :cling:

Was that directed at me..?

If so, thank you very much.

(If not, that's okay too. ^_^ )

Dave Against The Machine · Sat Feb 17, 2007 6:00 pm

I just kinda let the ball role and see what happens?

Mvmarcz · Post by **Mvmarcz** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 6:23 pm

fortunesfools wrote:
mvmarcz wrote:omigawdiloveyourcomic :cling:
Was that directed at me..?

If so, thank you very much.

(If not, that's okay too. ^_^ )

It totally was <3

LAO · Post by **LAO** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 6:39 pm

I get a general idea for a story arc, then I stumble through it via penis jokes and violence.

Dutch! · Post by **Dutch!** » Sat Feb 17, 2007 6:59 pm

I tend not to write anything out much any more either. I might jot a few quick jokes down from time to time, but I've found I can generally keep them somewhere neatly filed in my head for later use. I have a few jokes in there now that won't get used for a while, but I'm looking to find the appropriate place to use them. The plot will eventually give an opening for them. Whenever that is, I don't know.

I tend to work with little steps in the plot. There's no main ending in mind for the strip, and even no major plot to talk about either. The only definites I have is that sometime we will find how Wendy died, as we will learn where and the manner of the Soldier's death. I only know the sketchy details of both of these myself.

Other than that, the strip moves along towards those points, but I don't know where it's going to go while it's on its way there. I find the characters move the story for me, and it's a way I like to work. Even the jokes and single panels I generally work backwards. I think of what has to happen later in the strip and write the strips leading up to them as I go. The joke works in, then I draw the strip panels with a vague idea of the conversation or setup, and the dialogue is only ever written the first time as I put it into the final edition.

So no, no real scripting for me. Like I see it working with kids in real life, I've no idea what's really going to happen next. The best I can do is get them to sit down and listen from time to time.

Turnsky · Post by **Turnsky** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 8:32 am

Turnsky wrote:i don't script in the purest sense, what i do is jot down a few things for the chapter, character relations, random notes, etc..

otherwise i script completely on the fly.

i'd like to amend to this, as i'm doing some heft preliminary work to do with the next installment of my comic, and given that it's radically different than before (net knows about this!) it's gonna take a TON of work to get right, but either way, it's a script of sort, so i can basically remember various details and such so i can keep my story straight, as it were.

Swimmingtrunks · Post by **Swimmingtrunks** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 9:20 am

I actually don't divide my script into panels. I write the whole thing out as it comes to me (or as I need it), as if it were a screenplay of sorts. Then I mentally cut it up into pages- occasionally actually marking them in the document- and start drawing the one I'm on. Sometimes I need to add or remove or change dialogue after I've drawn the page to better fit what is going on inside it. Thumbnailing has always been going against the grain for me, for some reason- though I suppose I sort of do it right on the page, with increasingly detailed "sketch" layers before I get to the actual drawing. But yeah. Script, layout, draw, tweak script.

Siabur · Post by **Siabur** » Sun Feb 18, 2007 11:11 am

Wow. I had a total comic scripting experiance this past weekend! Getting writers block sucks. I went back and read the strips I have done and found a ton of material waiting for scripting, then I found the lost episodes, I misplaced a folder a few years back with a bunch of scripts and ideas. So I went through those and picked the best ones and went on a creative blast of my script method of dividing into 3 panels and writing the dialouge, I can visulize the cast doing the words.
The find also produced a long forgotten script book I did 25yearish ago for comic books I did at the time which were more storyboard type. Panel with the words, then a breif sketch of the cast and some other notes and stuff. Finding this has helped with the adaptation of some of my novels. So now I just need to draw. Oh now to get over the draw-ers block...